Thor Halvorssen Mendoza

Thor Leonardo Halvorssen Mendoza (born 1976 )—commonly known as Thor Halvorssen—is a human rights advocate and film producer with contributions in the field of public policy, public interest advocacy, individual rights and civil liberties, and pro-democracy advocacy. The New York Times described Halvorssen in an August 2007 profile as a maverick "who champions the underdog and the powerless." He is a columnist for the left-leaning Huffington Post.

Halvorssen is founder of the Oslo Freedom Forum, an annual gathering described by The Economist as a "spectacular human-rights festival... on its way to becoming a human-rights equivalent of the Davos economic forum". Halvorssen is president of the Human Rights Foundation, an organization devoted to protecting liberty in the Americas. He is the Patron of the Czech-based Children's Peace Movement, On Own Feet, and founder of the Moving Picture Institute. Halvorssen bought the traditionally leftist Norwegian news magazine Ny Tid in May 2010.

Halvorssen's opinions have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, National Public Radio, Time magazine, The Nation and National Journal, and he has appeared on television outlets such as al-Jazeera, Fox News Channel’s The O'Reilly Factor and Hannity & Colmes, MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews, CNN, and HBO.

Thor Halvorssen was a speaker at TEDx at the University of Pennsylvania in October of 2010.

Background
Halvorssen was born in Venezuela to Hilda Mendoza, a descendant of Venezuela's first two presidents Cristóbal Mendoza and Simón Bolívar. His father is Thor Halvorssen Hellum, who served as a Venezuelan Ambassador for anti-Narcotic Affairs in the administration of Carlos Andrés Pérez and as special overseas investigator of a Venezuelan Senate Commission. His family was prosperous and on his father's side he is the grandson of Øystein Halvorssen, the Norwegian king’s consul who "built a family dynasty as the Venezuelan representative for corporations including Dunlop and Ericsson."

Halvorssen attended the University of Pennsylvania and graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude, with concurrent undergraduate and graduate degrees in Political Science and History.

Father's imprisonment
When Halvorssen was a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania in 1993, his father was arrested while investigating the Medellín cartel for possible money laundering and bank fraud. His father was tortured, beaten, and in danger of being murdered during his 74-day incarceration in a Caracas jail on "trumped-up" charges of terrorism. Halvorssen led the campaign for his father’s release, garnering help from Amnesty International which issued protests along with other International organizations. Halvorssen was eventually found innocent of all charges. After his release the United Nations-affiliated International Society for Human Rights appointed him director of their Pan-American Committee.

Mother's shooting
While attending a peaceful protest of the Venezuelan recall referendum of 2004, Halvorssen's mother, Hilda Mendoza Denham, a British subject, was shot and wounded. Images of government supporters firing upon the demonstrators were captured by a live television broadcast. The Wall Street Journal published an article about the shooting of Halvorssen's mother written by himself. According to Halvorssen, his mother was brutally gunned down and wounded by members of the Venezuelan government security apparatus while attending a peaceful public gathering. The gunmen’s actions were broadcast on live television as they shot into the crowd, leaving twelve wounded and one (woman) dead. Gunmen were later apprehended, tried, had their sentences revoked, tried again, found guilty, and received 11-year sentences for murder and for bodily harm.

Film
Halvorssen co-produced the film Freedom's Fury which was executive produced by Lucy Liu, Quentin Tarantino, and Andrew Vajna. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. The film relates the story of the popular uprising against dictatorship that occurred in Hungary in 1956.

Halvorssen executive produced Hammer & Tickle, a film about the power of humor, ridicule, and satire as the language of truth under Soviet tyranny—jokes as a code to navigate the disconnect between propaganda and reality and as a means of resisting the system despite the absence of free speech. This film premiered at Tribeca in 2006 and featured Lech Wałęsa, Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev and Roy Medvedev. The film won Best New Documentary Film at the Zurich Film Festival.

Halvorssen is listed as producer of the documentary Indoctrinate U, "a documentary about left-wing bias on college campuses" which targets "the anti-intellectual, intolerant culture of [the USA's] campuses". American Literary Theorist Stanley Fish wrote in the New York Times "the academy invites the criticism it receives in this documentary" and the film received positive reviews from the Wall Street Journal, London Telegraph, New York Post, and CNN.

Halvorssen is producer of the film The Singing Revolution, a film about Estonia's peaceful struggle for political independence from Soviet occupation. The film premiered at the Black Nights Film Festival in December 2006 where it received a 15-minute standing ovation. Since then, it has become the most successful documentary film in Estonian box-office history.

Halvorssen produced The Sugar Babies, a film about human trafficking in the Dominican Republic and the plight of its migrant farm workers. The targets of the documentary are wealthy and politically connected sugar barons who live in West Palm Beach: The Fanjul Family. The film previewed at Florida International University where a heated exchange with the Dominican diplomatic envoy resulted in police presence. It received numerous negative reviews claiming the film's portrayal of big business and its relationship with the Dominican government was part of a campaign against the country's reputation. Death threats against the film's director and a bribery scandal involving the Dominican embassy have made the film a subject of intense media interest.

He is listed as sole producer of 2081, the film adaptation of author Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Bergeron", a dystopian film about a future in which a tyrannical government arrests, imprisons without trial, and tortures those who disagree with the government policy of enforced sterilization and enforced handicapping. It premiered at the Seattle Film Festival and stars Academy Award nominee Patricia Clarkson, Julie Hagerty, James Cosmo, and Armie Hammer. The film's music was composed by Lee Brooks and recorded by Kronos Quartet.

Democracy, civil liberties, and human rights advocacy
Halvorssen has a specialty on matters regarding human trafficking, slavery, and threats to democracy. He has lectured widely on the subject of human rights including Harvard Law School, the New York City Junto, the United Nations Association in New York, and the American Enterprise Institute.

Lucent Technologies
In 1999, Halvorssen spearheaded a campaign on the floor of the Lucent Technologies annual shareholder meeting appealing for the creation of an anti-slave labor policy whereby Lucent would require China to certify that Lucent's products were not fabricated using slave labor. China's Laogai camps allegedly imprison eight million men, women, and children in 1100 factories, farms, and other facilities producing a wide range of consumer products.

Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
In 1999, Halvorssen became the first executive director and chief executive officer of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a U.S. campus-focused civil liberties organization. U.S. News and World Report described FIRE in February, 2004 as "a major player in the campus wars", helping force "censorship-minded administrators into a defensive crouch".

Halvorssen has worked on civil liberties matters with public intellectuals from across the political and ideological spectrum. As head of FIRE, he formed coalitions that brought together the conservative and libertarian advocacy organizations such as the Heritage Foundation, Feminists for Free Expression, the Eagle Forum, with more traditional free speech defenders such as the ACLU. He has a track record of defending individuals both on the right and on the left of the political spectrum.

In 2001, Halvorssen stated that, "Liberty of opinion, speech, and expression is indispensable to a free and, in the deepest sense, progressive society. Deny it to one, and you deny it effectively to all. These truths long have been ignored and betrayed on our campuses, to the peril of a free society." In a 2003 moderated chat, he said, "History has taught us that a society that does not respect individual rights, freedom of conscience, and freedom of speech will not long survive as a free society in any form."

Human Rights Foundation
Halvorssen stepped down as head of FIRE in March 2004 to join its Board of Advisors, saying he wanted to move in a different direction. According to him, "In my birthplace, Venezuela, the government constantly tramples its constitution; due process, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, and economic liberty are all under assault. I know first-hand how readily innocent civilians may be arrested and even tortured for disagreeing with the government." He is no longer listed as a member of FIRE's Board of Advisors.

As someone who "personally understands the importance of protecting human rights" because of his family experiences, Halvorssen founded the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) in early 2005. Like FIRE, the HRF was conceived as an alternative to other human rights organizations which he considered inconsistent. "'Progressive' organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are charged by critics as having redefined human rights in such a way as to weaken the concept and make it unworkable," Halvorssen said the group will instead "champion the definition of human rights that originally animated the human rights movement, centered on the twin concepts of freedom of self-determination and freedom from tyranny.". The foundation was incorporated in 2005, opening its headquarters in New York City in August 2006. Its International Council includes several well-known prisoners of conscience such as Vaclav Havel, Elie Wiesel, Harry Wu, and Vladimir Bukovsky. It also includes democracy activists such as Mart Laar, and Garry Kasparov.

Halvorssen is a critic of Hugo Chávez, and has written on anti-Semitism and the assault on democracy and individual rights in Latin America. Halvorssen's criticisms have also been directed at U.S. Republicans such as Jack Kemp as well as Democrats including John Conyers and Jose Serrano. In a symposium published by the American conservative magazine National Review, he condemned Augusto Pinochet for his human rights abuses.

Oslo Freedom Forum
In 2009 Halvorssen founded a global gathering of human rights advocates called the Oslo Freedom Forum. It has taken place in Oslo annually since then. Forbes magazine described the meeting as "a heck of a good idea" and Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang called it a "Gathering of Heroes". Participants include Lubna al-Hussein, Jimmy Wales, Elie Wiesel, Marina Nemat, Peter Thiel, Julian Assange, Vaclav Havel, Garry Kasparov, and Leopoldo Lopez.

Children's Peace Movement
Since 2009, Halvorssen is listed as "Patron" of the Children's Peace Movement, On Own Feet. Known as the "Centipede Movement" it is a Czech-based group that facilitates bilateral relations between children and adolescents in Poland, Czech, Slovakia, Canada, and Norway with children in war-torn countries such as Afghanistan, Serbia, Croatia, and Iraq. The previous Patron was former Czech president Vaclav Havel.

Criticism of the United Nations Human Rights Council
In an article in the Huffington Post Halvorssen wrote: "It doesn’t take an academic or an intellectual to understand that something is very wrong when on the platform is the national leader of Iran who previously denied the holocaust that took place in Europe, expresses an interest in killing millions of Israeli Jews, and leads a government that actually hangs homosexuals. And this was just the first speaker! Durban II was a sad disappointment and it illustrates everything that is wrong with the current human rights establishment inside the UN. NGOs were put to one side and not allowed to comment or participate until after the final document was written. And some NGOs such as the ones representing Tibet or the Dalits were not even allowed to attend. What should have been a celebration of tolerance and dignity became a hatefest with several democracies simply standing up and walking out of the conference including Australia, Italy, Germany, Canada, The Netherlands, New Zealand, the U.S., Israel, and the Czech Republic. What did this say about Durban? Durban II was a disastrous embarrassment for those involved and it highlights several important weaknesses and shortcomings displayed by the human rights establishment. A magnificent opportunity to advance human rights in the world became a platform for the continuing corruption of human rights. Human Rights has, unfortunately, become watered down and redefined."

Awards and recognition
University of Pennsylvania president Judith Rodin honored Halvorssen's achievements by awarding him the Sol Feinstone Award for protecting student speech. Halvorssen is a supporter and fellow of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni and belongs to the leadership board.

In 2010 Romanian leader Emil Constantinescu presented Halvorssen with a presidential silver medal to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Romanian Revolution of 1989. "On behalf of those who fought and died for freedom, I present this medal to the Oslo Freedom Forum founder, and remind those here that even if Romanians live in democracy now, we cannot feel entirely free as long as other people--who live under dictatorial and repressive regimes anywhere in the world--are not also be free."

Publications

 * Halvorssen, Thor L (1996). Simón Bolívar and the Enlightenment, University of Pennsylvania.